The Shadow of Venus (15 page)

“His former lover. He and Veronica had broken up by then. June said it happened several times, but Damon would only admit to once to Veronica and to nothing to the DA.”

Claire had heard the “once” excuse before. Whatever men did wrong, they only admitted to doing it once. Why did they think once was any different from ten thousand times? “Was that why he moved into town?”

“Yeah. Damon said the sex was consensual and June didn't deny it, but the scandal tore the Cave Commune apart. Damon moved into town and eventually found Sharon Miller to support him. She was new to Taos and didn't know any better. Damon talks a good game. He's magnetic, and in the free-love atmosphere of the commune he was king. Some women find him irresistible, but he's scum and love is never free. Damon didn't think there was anything wrong with having sex with underage girls, even a girl who was the daughter of his lover.” The man put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sinking sun. “Could I see the picture you have of June and the girls dancing?”

“I'd like to know who you are first and why you want to see it,” Claire said.

“My name is Bill Hartley. I teach skiing in the winter, work construction in the summer. Damon had sex with my daughter.” He clenched his fists again, tightening the muscles in his forearms.

“All right.” Claire was glad to move away from Buffalo Point, but she wasn't willing to walk next to Bill on the edge of the precipice. She wasn't comfortable with him walking behind her, either. “You go first,” she said.

He walked quickly with an athlete's fluid grace, never once turning back to see if Claire followed. When they reached her truck she unlocked the cab, took the picture out of the folder, and handed it to him.

Although there was little wind, the picture fluttered in his hands. “That's my daughter, Rose,” he said, pointing to one of the girls. Her face wasn't visible, but she had her father's medium-brown hair. “I want to know how my daughter ended up in this picture.”

“June asked an artist in Albuquerque to paint her with six other girls dancing in a circle. She described the other girls and herself as she was when she was twelve,” Claire stared at the girls in their white dresses. “Did Damon sleep with all of these girls?”

“I don't know. I only know he slept with my daughter, Sophie Roybal, and June. Sophie wouldn't talk to me about it. She's moved to Durango.”

“Did all those girls live in the commune?”

“No.
After the scandal Damon moved into town and had sex with some of the town girls, including my daughter. I complained to the district attorney, Allana Bruno, but she said it would be very difficult to get a conviction in Rose's case because she was sixteen at the time. She's twenty now. Allana needed a victim younger than thirteen to convict Damon of criminal sexual penetration in the first degree. The only way she could get a conviction for Rose was if she would testify that she was raped. But Rose wasn't willing to do that. That scumbag took away my daughter's innocence, and I want him to pay for it. The DA brought him in and got him to agree to counseling, but that's nothing. He meets once a week with other sex offenders, only he doesn't think he's like them. In my opinion he's just like every pedophile priest who took advantage of his power.” The photocopy of the picture rattled in his hands like a dead leaf.

“What became of your daughter?” Claire asked.

“She's working in Denver and getting her life together. But my wife and I are still here. This is our home. Why should we have to leave? Taos is a small town and everywhere I go I see Damon Fitzgerald. I can't even pump gas without running into the son of a bitch. June was my only hope for putting him in jail. Because she was twelve the criminal sexual penetration was a first-degree felony, which could mean life in prison. There's no statute of limitations on first-degree felonies. It took me a long time to track June down but a friend of Rose's saw her on the street in Albuquerque carrying her belongings around in plastic bags. I went down there to find her and talk to her.”

“When?” Claire asked.

“In May. I went to the homeless shelters but no one would tell me anything. They think a man who is looking for a woman on the street wants to cause trouble. I started asking street people and I met one who knew June and knew where she hung out. I found her in the public library on Copper.”

“Was she on drugs?”

“She seemed straight to me. June was a smart girl. She told me she spent her days in the libraries reading and studying. She hated Damon. She said she and Veronica had a horrible fight over him and she blamed herself for her mother's death. I don't think she ever recovered from that.”

Does anyone ever recover from the suicide of a mother? Claire asked herself. Especially in those circumstances?

“She said she never wanted to come back to Taos or to see Damon ever again. I pleaded with her.” Bill crunched the picture in his hand until the paper crumpled into peaks and valleys. “I told her she owed Rose and the other girls, but she was stubborn. I got angry. I yelled at June, and I shouldn't have done that. The librarian came and asked me to leave the library. That was the last I saw of June.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stared at the paper as if surprised to see it had become a model of a mountain range. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I hope you have another copy.”

“Don't
worry about it,” Claire said. “You were asking a fragile young person to do something very difficult.”

“I know. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed so hard. But later she called me and said she had set up an appointment with Allana Bruno, only she didn't show up. I never heard anything more until you turned up looking for information about her. Why? Was she a friend of yours?”

“I only met her twice.” Claire explained the events that had brought her to Taos. “Did June mention her father when you talked to her?”

“No. I didn't know who her father was. I'm sure he would be angry as hell to know that Damon Fitzgerald had sex with his twelve-year-old daughter.”

How angry would Edward be? thought Claire. As angry as Bill Hartley? Was Edward emotionally connected enough to his daughter to feel anger or anything else?

“Who was the person who told you where to find June?” she asked.

“A woman on the street with dyed red hair. I don't know her name.”

“Where did you find her?”

“She was sleeping in the backseat of a parked car near Central. She knew June well enough to know where she hung out. How exactly did June die?”

“Of a heroin overdose. She went into a storage room to sleep or to shoot up.”

“Did she leave a note?” Bill asked. His eyes, which had remained focused on Claire so far, began to circle around the mesa.

Claire saw guilt in the eye movement as if Bill feared his confrontation with June might have driven her over the edge. “There was no note,” she replied. “June—who was known as Maia on the street—injected a strong type of heroin not usually seen in Albuquerque. Apparently she hadn't used for a while. Maybe she'd become more sensitive to the effects of the drug.” She didn't say that something—or somebody—had driven June to start using again. Deepening lines in Bill's forehead indicated he might already have considered that. On the other hand, facial lines always deepened in New Mexico as the sun neared the horizon.

The day was ending and Claire's adrenaline was running out. She'd delivered and heard enough bad news for one day. “I need to get back to Albuquerque,” she said, handing him her card. “Could I have your number? The APD is investigating and they may want to get in touch with you.”

“Sure.” She handed him a pen and he wrote down his number on the back of one of her cards. He handed her the scrunched-up picture. “Sorry about that.”

“It's all right. I have other copies. Would you like me to send you one?”

“No. I don't want to be reminded.”

They said good-bye. Claire got in her truck and drove back across the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

Chapter
Eighteen

S
HE PASSED THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF
T
AOS
, down the fast food strip that could have been anywhere USA, and across the mesa. The road snaked down to the level of the river. The sun hadn't quite set yet, but the canyon was already in deep shadow. There were narrow places where she passed through roadside villages. Even narrower places where there was nothing but the river on one side of her and a slippery slope on the other. Boulders broke free from their moorings here and rolled down the talus slope, picking up rocks as they fell and occasionally crashing into vehicles. Claire remembered Bill's hands crushing the picture of the dancing girls. He didn't want to be reminded by this picture, yet he remained in Taos where he would always be reminded, as long as Damon was in town. Bill Hartley was smaller than Damon but he appeared quicker and more athletic. Bill was not getting a paunch. He seemed capable of winning a physical contest if it came to that, but he hadn't taken that path. He'd internalized his anger and it was consuming him.

Claire thought his anger might be considered excessive, but she didn't know his daughter. A sixteen-year-old girl could be very experienced these days or she might not. Apparently the law didn't do much to protect sixteen-year-olds from consensual encounters, but it did protect girls who were twelve. Another father who had cause for lawful anger was Edward Girard. Claire would have to tell him what she had learned in Taos. She wished she could do it in person to see his reaction. Why had he told her he'd read that Veronica jumped off the bridge? Was that detail a lie, was it artistic license, or had he gotten the facts confused over the years? Claire knew now that Damon Fitzgerald had lied about June and was likely to do it again if he thought he could get away with it. It was also possible that Bill Hartley had been lying. It would be easy enough to find the newspaper article and get the facts about where Veronica had died. Easy, too, to call the Taos County DA and get the facts about June and Damon Fitzgerald.

Claire thought about men, lies, and anger as she drove through the narrow part of the canyon. The fact that she and June were both twelve when they were abused was one more link. Her thoughts took a switchback turn to her own unanswerable questions. What would her father have done if she'd told him about George Hogan? He would have been hurt and angry, but she doubted he would have physically attacked George; he was too civilized. If there was a bear inside her father, Claire had never seen it. The anger would have churned around inside him the way it was inside Bill Hartley. Her family had some legal recourse, which might have brought some resolution. Bill Hartley did not. He had to rely on others to file a complaint, and now there was one less girl to come forward.

It
was tragic if his anger had been the straw that broke Maia/June's fragile back. If Bill Hartley's story was true, she'd had sex with her mother's lover and sometime after the news came out her mother was found dead in the Rio Grande Gorge. What kind of a burden was that for a girl to carry around? If heroin was available, it would have been all too easy to take it to ease the pain.

Claire's instinct was to believe Bill Hartley's story. His pain seemed too raw and real to be manufactured. There was one benefit that might have come from Damon's remaining in Taos. In a sense the tension between him and Bill had produced a stalemate. It was doubtful Damon would try to have sex with another young girl in Taos with the DA and Bill Hartley watching. But there was nothing to stop him from leaving Taos and doing it again. Sexual offenders were repeat offenders.

Darkness entered the gorge and Claire turned on her headlights. There had been no trial for George Hogan, no confrontation, no expressed anger, no punishment, which gave Claire her own backpack loaded with guilt to lug around. Her actions had protected her and her father but had left George Hogan free to molest again. Like the boulders that tumbled over the top of the gorge, picking up momentum as they fell, sexual abuse had repercussions until everybody in its path was flattened or dead. Claire, who would always regret she'd done nothing to stop George, thought of ways to prevent Damon from abusing again.

******

By the time she got home she was completely out of adrenaline. Ignoring the pleas of her cat, she fell into bed, slept through the night, and didn't wake up till eight thirty in the morning. Claire was going to be late for work, but that wasn't the first thing on her mind. She made a cup of coffee, sat down at her dining room table, and called Allana Bruno in Taos. First she spoke to the DA's assistant, explained who she was, and said that she had information about June Reid. Claire waited until the DA herself came to the phone before she would reveal what the information was.

Allana Bruno's manner was crisp and businesslike until Claire said that she believed the woman found dead in the library storage room was June Reid.

“Well, that's terrible news,” Allana said, revealing a soft center beneath her crusty surface. “Terrible for June, terrible for me, terrible for everyone else. Can you tell me how and when she died?”

“It happened on Memorial Day weekend. The APD believes she died of a drug overdose.” Claire told Allana how to get in touch with Detective Owen.

“Are you positive the woman who died is June?”

“I met Edward Girard, who believes he is June's father, in Colorado. He told me June had lived in the Cave Commune. I showed a painting of the woman who died to a woman named Maureen there. Later I met Bill Hartley. She and Bill both identified the woman in the painting as June Reid.”

“Was
the woman you talked to Maureen Prescott?”

“I didn't get her last name.”

“Young, streetwise woman with a baby?”